Thanks CK-- for making my point.. I am proof that educational failures and poor home life are a handicap, but one that you can overcome.. if you want to.

i left home age 17-- with bruises around my neck, left by my mother as she made a sincere effort to throttle me to death.. (hey its old new, and I'm long over it.. )

my education still has deficiencies, and i still don't have the discipline i see in others who had-- what ever their other handicaps, parents who were able to provide emotionally for their children.

but starting at 18 (or in my case 17, when i was emancipated) its my problem. i can't blame my parents for ever.. at some point, i had to say, i want more.. and i had to go out and get it.

there are plenty of people who had it tough, tougher than me.. yeah, i started out behind many, since at 17 i was an emotional wreck.. but i didn't compound the problem by using drugs, or abdicating responsibility..

I didn't get to college till i was almost 40.. but i got there.. i didn't in may ways "grow up" till i was close to the same age.. i spent 20 years of my life undoing my childhood, and redoing my life to meet my needs.. lots of other people where spending those 20 years building careers, and i am 20 years behind the curve in some ways..

some people use a poor childhood as an excuse all their lives.. they never move on.. the rest of the horses might be back in the barn, and I'm still out on the track, just heading for the straight away.. but I'm in the race!

is that there ontongeny anything like a childhood exposure to the Goonshow, CK?

Let's just say that when I was young we didn't have the Internet and the Goon Show was just about the closest thing I could find to unbridled mania. Come to think of it, the Goon Show may still be the closest thing there is to unbridled mania ...

True! I have watched with surprise and pleasure as my 15 y/o daughter discovered the Goons completely independently for herself over the past 6 months - she dissolves into complete giggles at the inspired lunacy, and my son can quote amazingly accurately in all the daft voices. Min.. is that you..?

I had an exceptional English teacher in the fourth form (no, it wasn't at St Michael's!), who tried to teach us a lot of things about language, and really kindled my interest in it beyond the obvious.

He was an exceptional man, passionate about English but unfortunately also about religion, because he later completely lost the plot and became an Anglican minister. He liked boys (and I DON'T mean that in any salacious way) and tried to get them to think. Part of his approach within the context of studying English was to dissect humour, to try to demonstrate why some wordplay-related things were funny and others went down like a lead balloon. Enter The Goonshow. It's chocka with just about every humorous linguistic device known to mankind. He played excerpts from a number of shows one day and we were to discuss them.

Three of us in the classroom (of some 30 boys) were ROTF almost from the first moments. This was two boys (myself and Jim Mora, now a well-known broadcaster in New Zealand whose commentaries are usually absolutely hilarious) plus said Mr Evans. The rest of the class was more-or-less po-faced. Didn't get the joke at all. Oh, they twitched from time to time, but they just weren't open to that kind of zany play-on-top-of-wordplay. Even at that age they were seriously serious and morbidly career-focussed.

At this point I should point out that the majority of those humourless little twerps went on to become "big men" in Zildish society - doctors, lawyers, teachers, dentists, accountants, a few businessmen and now, one judge. You can tell what a bundle of laughs our class reunions are. I avoid 'em like the plague!

I've only ever heard one or two Goon shows, and I must admit I didn't take to them for much the same reason as I've never taken to Donald Duck -- I find it too difficult to understand what the silly voices are saying to worry about whether what they're saying is funny.

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